acrobat
performance
research farm
In the (dying) tradition of circus, old acrobats become clowns and continue to work into older age.
‘It’s Not For Everyone’ begins with this pretence before careering off into an absurd indulgence of low-brow humour.
As the show unfolds, the travesty becomes progressively more expressionistic, the clown personas gradually degrade and they become increasingly covered in mud.
The performance starts with the most affected representation of humanity, then erodes until it becomes elemental. Dirt.
It's Not For Everyone
∗∗ It's everything for someone
This is bitter clowning and the meanings are sinister and unflinching. But the shifts of focus are fast and fascinating...
Calling their show It’s Not for Everyone suggests a challenge to the audience but with its theatrical flair and invention, it is one easily taken up. Even as they morph from daffy entertainers on a bike to wrestling bodies smeared in mud, there is a sense that we are being presented with a series of very understandable yet absurdist propositions. Lancaster and Yates are like Estragon and Vladimir in Godot, or maybe Hamm and Clov in their dustbins in Endgame. No wonder Samuel Beckett loved clowns so much. He would have loved Acrobat.
Murray Bramwell, The Daily Review 2017
‘This is acrobat at its best, where feats of remarkable, almost impossible physicality combine with minimal dialogue to shine a small beam of truth onto the dark side of the status quo.……The show is both bold and abstract with a collection of powerful messages delivered in this patchwork-style.’
Kate Rotherham, RealTime Arts 2015
It is a show that rebels against the easy laugh or the spoon feeding of comprehension... Populism, in art or politics, necessarily involves a dilution of substance. This show is so substantial that it is as thick as mud.
James Murphy, Scenestr. 2017
It’s Not For Everyone is a triumph that continues to challenge and provoke long after the curtain falls...Utterly memorable
Kate Uren, The Advertiser 2017
‘It’s not hard to follow, yet incredibly hard to predict and acrobat’s It’s Not For Everyone had me hypnotised and mesmerised with their construct on age, gender and identity…..It’s a brave show, brilliantly produced that gives you just enough to make the links and leaves you wanting more…’
Claire Killeen, The Border Mail 2015
'acrobat have a new show, titled ‘it’s not for everyone’. The company occupy a special if unusual place in the history of circus in australia. On the one hand, they are greatly admired within the performing arts community for the exceptional rigour of their performances and a spare, barely adorned, even feral aesthetic. On the other, not many australians have had the pleasure of being thrilled by them. Their successful career has largely played out, with exceptionally good reviews, in europe.'
Keith Gallasch, RealTime Arts
At once awesome and hopeless, evolved and archaic, forthright and confused, acrobat is full of contrast and contradiction.
Performance duration:
65min
Audience:
Adults, though we believe that it is OK for 12 y.o. and up if accompanied by an adult.
Performance space:
10m x 10m x 5.5m high. We require blackout conditions.
Basic rigging requirement:
1 aerial point in centre of performance area
4 ground anchor points at stage level - one at each corner of the 10m x 10m performance area.
Contact us for detailed technical requirements
